Shanghai is not so famous for its history as Xi An(西安) or Bei Jing(北京). During the long history of China, Most historical events and wars took places in the northern part. Although seldom being a focus, Shanghai still has a quite long history.

Due to its geographical position, Shanghai was formed by the silt from Yangtze River(长江). About six thousand years ago, the west portion of Shanghai was formed. The major portion of Shanghai, including the urban area now, was formed about a thousand years ago.

210 BC, the first emperor of the whole China-Qin Shi Huang(秦始皇) went through Shanghai area with a lot of officials. It was said that he passed the area where now Song Jiang District(松江区) and Qing Pu District(青浦区) are, and saw a lot of people on boats trading with each other. It probably means that at that time the major part of Shanghai had been formed then.

In the following next several hundred years, the west of Shanghai was where most of people lived. And the main activities here were fishing and producing sea salt. There was a county in now Jin Shan District(金山区) called Sea Salt County(海盐县).

Sea salt brought a lot of profits and made this area more and more prosperous. For a long time, the now Song Jiang District(松江区) was the center of this area and the government then was located here. Over time, the economy center of the area moved eastwards. More and more people moved to where it used to be a small fishing village. In Song Dynasty(宋朝)(960-1279), it was called "Shanghai Town". In Yuan Dynasty(元朝)(1279-1368), it was called "Shanghai County". People started to know this area as "Shanghai". Till the year 1840, Shanghai had become a famous city of East China.

In 1842, Britain won the war against Qing Dynasty(清朝) and Shanghai was forced to be one of the 5 open ports. British started to move in and established a consession (租界) in 1845. The French and American consessions were then established in 1848-1849. The consessions existed in Shanghai for about a hundred years. And in this 100 years, western culture impacted the city greatly. Till now, there are a lot of european style buildings on the Bund(外滩). And some words in Shanghainese were affected by English, such as cement(水门汀) or sofa(沙发).

In 1853, a revolt happened in Shanghai against the government of Qing Dynasty. The revolt was brought up by a secret inion "Dagger Society"(小刀会). They took most areas of Shanghai for more than a year. The famous Yu Garden(豫园) now was their headquarter then. In 1854, the revolt was put down. This revolt was only one of the messes that Shanghai went through from 1843 to 1949. A great deal more and a lot of wars happened in the 106 years. In 1925, Shanghai was named as "Song Hu city"(淞沪市). In 1930, it was changed back to "Shanghai city".

Now Shanghai is one of the largest cities in the world. The statistics showed that in 2007, the residents in Shanghai were more than 18 million, and travellers in Shanghai average more than 6 million every day.